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From 'air-pocalypse' to azure: Beijing's cleaner air a rare victory for dissent
- graderjs 5y agoWhat a strange (and dishonest) way to characterize it. These kind of things aren't 'rare.' The central government is pretty consistent in demanding and implementing change when people are pissed off at something. They don't just centrally direct policies, they actively respond--often in ways that seem more responsive than so-called "representative liberal democracies". Further, many people in the West do not know that there are democratic processes built into the bureaucracy of the party, in the sense that its structure fans out to very granular local community level officials who implement local policy in consultation with the people, constantly. But I think these sort of things were people get angry about something then the change comes from the top-down is a more ad-hoc democratic process in the party. I'm not cheerleading the democratic aspect of their organization, I'm just trying to be clear about it. I feel sad when the Western press misrepresents it. Because it feels like an insult towards China--and that's sad. It's like, "Why you need to do that?" But it also is an insult towards people in the West, in that, they should be told the truth. Like, "Why do you need to lie to them?" That's what I think. So I try to push for a bit more clarity in how the West views China, I think that's better for China and the West. That's why I'm highlighting this dishonest headline. I've shortened but not changed the meaning of the headline in order to fit it into the limit here.